When Haunt for Kinect was announced we regarded it as one of the first hardcore Kinect games to come out. The game was announced as a horror game and everyone thought it would be a core game for adults that would get a “mature” rating. Then, a few months later, the rating came in and it turned out Haunt received a “PG” rating! This caused an uproar in Kinect land as everyone immediately saw Haunt as a kiddie game that would only be fun for a younger audience. The question is: Is Haunt a core Kinect game that is fun for everyone to play, or is it really only for kids? I spend some quality time with the game and you’ll find the answer in this review!

Look mom, no rails!

The experience of playing Haunt can be most accurately compared to that of going through a Haunted House found at most traveling carnivals. The game takes place in a dark, eery lit haunted house that, even though the graphics are cartoony, really radiates that ambiance of a classic haunted mansion. The cool thing is that, just like with a traveling carnival, you get to move on your own through this house! The only other game where we have seen something like that so far is Rise of Nightmares and it is nice to see this sort of free-movement picked up in another game.

In Haunt you are free to walk around wherever you want!

The movement through the house works quite well and the game mechanic used for this fits the theme perfectly! Holding up your right hand will act as if shining a flashlight, moving your hand around will move the flashlight and moving it into the edges of the screen will make your character look up and down and turn left and right. To move around you simply walk on the spot. This sounds like a very tiring thing but because the haunted mansion is built up out of small rooms and tight corridors you won’t be doing that much turning and walking. For those that might have trouble turning in those tight corridors there is even a simplified movement mode in which your character will automatically turn into corners. It all works surprisingly well!

Boo!

The big question that most people probably will have is whether this game is scary or not. To answer this question I again will have to compare the game’s experience to that of a haunted house at a traveling carnival: The game will try to scare you in exactly the same way as those classic attraction will try to do. In the game you’ll find all kinds of cheesy stuff like pipes that suddenly spray gas at you, trapdoor that suddenly fly open, medieval armors that suddenly move and try to slash you, and a whole lot more of this stuff. The nice thing here is that there are plenty of objects in the game that could suddenly spring to live, but only a few of them do that. So the game is a little bit scary, but in a fun and silly way. It’s not the hardcore horror that some people might’ve been looking for, but it’s a great load of fun nonetheless.

The atmosphere in Haunt is superb!

A hauntingly diverse experience

Inside the haunted mansion you’ll be guided along by “Benjy”, the owner of the house who somehow got himself trapped in the paintings of the mansion. Benjy, voiced by Tim Schafer, will give you tips on what to do next and will comment on your performance. The voice acting is superb and the dialog is full of jokes and funny remarks. Getting to a next area is always a pleasurable experience, because on entering you are most often welcomed by another strong piece of dialog by Tim Schafer.

The gameplay of Haunt mainly consist of finding items to open up pathways to new area’s. The mansion itself is not so big, but you’ll find yourself quite often in front of closed doors and other obstacles and you’ll have to backtrack to find the right items. This is not so much of a problem because the developer used clever ways to have different events happen when you go through areas you’ve already explored: You never know what will happen next! Along your hunt for items you’ll also encounter ghosts that have to be defeated for you to be able to continue. These encounters won’t require you to move around but will have you perform a series of quick-time events to defeat them.

Haunt’s gameplay might seem a bit repetitive (find objects, defeat ghosts, move on), but this is fortunately countered by the three different themed sections of the house. Each of the vials you must find is hidden in a distinct section of the Mansion and each section has its own theme that changes the way you interact with the game! The three themes are “Movement”, “Light” and “Sound”. In movement you’ll be doing lots of dodging, jumping and ducking while for example in sound you’ll be screaming your lungs out to progress. Each section also has their own special ghost that must be defeated with either movement, light or sound. The fact that the gameplay is so different in each section is very refreshing and keeps the game from getting boring. When you are playing you’ll want to know what the next the section will hold for you and this will make you want to keep going on. I actually finished the game in just one sitting!

A mechanism found in the "sound" section of the mansion

The game itself unfortunately is not very challenging and difficulty wise primarily aimed towards kids. In fights and moments where you have to quickly dodge incoming danger the game will always slow down and clearly indicate what action you have to take to avoid getting hit. You’ll get a second or so to respond so you’ll always find yourself having enough time to dodge, jump, punch, scream or do whatever the game requires. When hit by a ghost you’ll lose some health but during the game I never saw my health drop a significant amount and in the end I even received an achievement for not using any health potions.

Scary good use of Kinect

Haunt makes use of a wide scale of Kinect features and is with that a completely unique experience. The three themes of the house each use a different way of interaction with the Kinect sensor and with that each offer a different gameplay experience. The game even uses the Kinect camera function in an unexpected and clever way: At some point I walked into a room and saw a picture of myself hanging on the wall. Very spooky stuff and just a neat way to use all the functionality that the Kinect sensor has to offer.

One of the ghosts you'll encounter during your exploration

Short

Haunt does unfortunately also have its shortcomings. One thing is that some element of the game are very repetitive and take up a good chunk of time. For example, you’ll be opening lots of doors in the haunted mansion and each time you have to perform this action you first have to shine on the door for two seconds and then either push or pull away from you. The same goes with opening drawer, closets and chests. At first it seems neat that you have to make the exact movement you’d do in real life, but after some time this time-consuming and repetitive element gets tedious and maybe even a bit annoying.

The game is also not very long: I think I finished it in under three hours, and with almost no real replay value this is really on the short side. After finishing the game you are able to replay stages and compete for high scores on the leaderboard (get a higher score by finding more objects and getting hit less), but I didn’t really fancy going back and redoing the stages again.

Conclusion

Haunt turned out to be a fun game full of atmosphere and cheesy scare moments that makes great use of the Kinect sensor. The movement, the interaction, the clever way it uses about all that the Kinect sensor has to offer is absolutely great and the tracking is pretty close to perfect. While the game is definitely great for kids I thoroughly enjoyed it too, the continually changing gameplay and great and funny voice acting provide for enough entertainment for anyone to like this. The game does have a few elements that can get tedious and repetitive over time, and the game is far too short for my liking. But overall Haunt it is a satisfying and enjoyable Haunted House trip that hits all the right marks and has very few flaws. Haunt is a must-have for any Kinect owner, whether young or old.

I checked my little kid games quota and it is already full. Not a cent for microsoft unless for core games. This is enough. Will keep playing pc games instead.

BlackTax

A real hardcore gamer wouldn’t restrict himself to a small number of genres. Hardcore doesn’t mean “only games with guns and fighting”. Variety is the spice of life, and I’d much rather play hours of Skyrim, jump into a game of Kinect Sports, play a bit of Rock Band and then a bit of Battlefield than be stuck with your view of what real gamers should play. Reminds me of my 15 year old brother who just watches crappy action movies and avoids Pixar and fantastic movies like Scorcese’s Hugo because they’re “for kids”.

mark

I was impressed by Haunt, and for the price it may one the best Kinect games out right now.

Luc

Loved the Kinect controls and gameplay but it keeps you longing for more since it’s very easy. There’s a downloadable content menu item so hopefully there will be DLC that is more challenging (faster ghosts and more complex puzzles).

Corellianrogue

That’s good to hear. Are there any blocked off areas of the mansion by any chance? If so then maybe they’ll release DLC with extra areas that unblock those.

Adny2

I dont understand this. It’s been going on for years and years and years. Why do developers make these cool little games (and some of them more elaborate) and leave them as a quick ‘one-off’ experiences? Why not randomize the events in the game? randomize where items are hidden? which doors you should unlock? and characters you would meet? and maybe the events of the story as well? this way there’s sure to be great reasoning for multiple playthroughs. A perfect example is Sega’s Phantasy Star Online, where they made up for limited dungeons by making the game randomize the layouts of the dungeons. And also the same with and older lesser known game like Burning Rangers. An anime inspired fire fighting game. It too had random characters to save, randomized events and levels to keep you replaying those levels over and over until you eventually unlocked all the civilians in the game (including secret characters). To go back even further, take a look at the classic board game ‘Clue’. That’s a game where the clues are shuffled and randomized, and when all is said and done, it’s not always ‘the butler that did it’.

Games like Haunt, and even Ghostbusters could of benefited from randomizing the events. Even if the devs wanted to maintain a certain story structure, they should offer the random replay value as a side mode. I’d love to explore a haunted house that’ll keep me on my toes, where I wouldn’t know that the exact same items would always be found in the same location, and the same ghosts or characters would always attempt a spook or haunting in the same areas. The first play through, sure it would be cool. But as it is right now, the second and third and fourth would be boring and dry because you know all there is to know of the game.

By now you’d think the developers would think more about these types of games!

Corellianrogue

I’d love a sequel to Burning Rangers or even a remake! (I don’t mean a Kinect game, a regular joypad version will do fine.)

VoiD

Adny2, i agree completely with you!!! Never understood why interactive software that gives you an amazing experience couldnt be simply modified with an option to randomize stuff, to give you another “new” experience everytime. Its interactive. So easy to programm randomize factor into code, thats what code and programm does best: computing/calculating.

Also never understood why makers wouldnt offer option in games to make the game a new kind of experience by changing some game-rules. For example: i love gtaiv, i love to drive the cars in that game, i drive them in first-person view, it feels really good. I would like to have a ‘hardcore’/’sim’ mode i could toggle on/off whereby i would have to drive clean, respect red traffic lights, not bumping into other cars, not speeding whilst in proximity of police cars etc. That would make me very happy if such a thing would be possible. I dont believe its difficult to implement, i also think it wouldnt be for everyone, i know, but it would be fun for me and maybe some more other people too and it would give you another way to play, another play option, it would extend gameplay. Can only be good thing, no?

In case of this game Haunt, i would like to have the option to play again, without text, so no signs/warnings to duck, step aside etc. Just clean gameplay, i figure it out myself (after playing the game the first time with signs, if the gamemaker insists of having them), especiallly after completing the game the first time. Give me authentic gameplay without all the text saying me what to do like it isnt obvious allready.

So many easy to implement changes that would affect the game positively, longetivity wise and broaden the appeal of the game itself to wider (age) audience.

But im no programmer, so probably think too lightly about it all, otherwise i couldnt understand why they wouldnt think about it themselves and implement it.

Bjgmachado

The walking felt very disjointed and clunky to me. I had to “march” instead of walking, and every step the “character” took seemed more like a small jump than natural walking. Very clunky. The (weird) walking system of Rise of Nightmares felt smoother to me.

Couldn’t stand the ghost encounters with the slow-down prompts. It killed any interest in the encounters. Let me time my dodges and attacks, i don’t need a prompt for everything!

guest

yeah, in the demo I felt like marching where you kick your lower leg out worked better than high knees or normal walking. as for the prompts, is that throughout the game or just in the demo (which was too short and only the tutorial level)?

Yetter

The demo was enough for me. Though I did find that walking in one spot worked well enough I found it became tedious quickly. I also preferred Rise of Nightmares walking mechanic. Though it was weird at least it didn’t become boring